Pages

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Beatles in Birminham

Beatle fans waiting in the rain before the concert in Birmingham in 1964

Ringo and John walking into the Odeon

Another day of the tour for the Beatles as the moved onto Birmingham on October 11, 1964. Here are some memories from those who experienced this performance:

I was 11 years old. My sister worked at the Odeon cinema in
Birmingham. She would literally force me along to these weekly live events. But
this evening was different — I sensed it. My instructions were to sit in the
middle of the lower amphitheater and under no circumstances move from my
allocated seat until the whole place had been emptied of people.

Mentally tied to my seat, suddenly the place became a seething mass of excited,
screaming teenagers. The girls around me started quaking, changing from nice
normal people into lunatics. The first acts dragged through their sets, then
the company mimed the position and way the four members of the next band held
their instruments. The place went wild. The girl near to me pulled at her hair,
screaming and then as the curtains opened promptly fainted on the spot. Girls
were being carried out; some only part-conscious or so overcome they had become
hysterical.

The whole thing seemed over in a flash. By the end, the front six or seven rows
of people had been removed in tears by the St John’s Ambulance. I went to many
other festivals, concerts, but never have I experienced anything like that
night.

Professor Marty St. James

Don't ask me how because we were right at the back, but for some strange reason we could hear them singing over all that screaming and it was a fantastic concert. You could hear everything. There were police in uniforms placed all along the wall upstairs, but the girls downstairs were trying to get up on the stage. I couldn't believe that we could hear every word. When the curtain came down at the end everyone was waiting for them to come back out and take their ovation, but when the curtains opened there were just their guitars on the stage. John Harte (age 18 at the time)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Featured Post

I was fortunately to receive the Beatles Yellow Submarine Lego set over the past weekend and I am excited to tell you about it in tonig...

Welcome Beatle fans!

This blog is to highlight photos and stories of people who have met the Beatles in person. And while fan taken photos are my favorite, I also like to include vintage fan photos and other photos that show the Beatles meeting fans.

The idea behind this blog is to follow in the footsteps of the great Beatle fanzines of the 1970's & 1980's such as The Write Thing, The Harrison Alliance, With a Little Help from my Friends, Paperback Writer, etc etc. Photos and article from those publications and others are reproduced here to preserve the history of the fans who met one or more Beatle in person.

If you have ever met one of the Beatles and have a story or pictures to share, please contact me, Sara, at Starshyne9@yahoo.com.

I have never met the Beatles (besides in my dreams) but love fan photos. These photos are from my collection, which spans 17 years of online photo collecting and scanning books. I do not claim any copyright of these photos or stories. Some of them are sent to me and published with permission. Others are scanned from magazines, books and found in various places online. I do not watermark photos that I place on this blog because I do not own any of the photos. These photos are on this blog in an attempt to preserve the history of the Beatles. If you own the rights to a photo and wish to have it removed from this blog, please contact me.